Katy preacher, wife perish in floodwaters while trying to check on family member

Donald Rogers and his wife, Rochelle Rogers. The couple died Wednesday after driving their car through floodwaters in Fulshear, Fort Bend County.

Donald Rogers and his wife, Rochelle Rogers. The couple died Wednesday after driving their car through floodwaters in Fulshear, Fort Bend County.

Photo: Family Photo

Photo: Family Photo

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Donald Rogers and his wife, Rochelle Rogers. The couple died Wednesday after driving their car through floodwaters in Fulshear, Fort Bend County.

Donald Rogers and his wife, Rochelle Rogers. The couple died Wednesday after driving their car through floodwaters in Fulshear, Fort Bend County.

Photo: Family Photo

Katy preacher, wife perish in floodwaters while trying to check on family member

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A Katy preacher and his wife who went to check on a family member Wednesday afternoon died when they drove into floodwaters that proved too deep to escape.

The sheriff's office identified the victims as Donald Rogers, 65, and his wife Rochelle.

Donald Rogers died a few feet from the road named after his grandfather, and just down the street from his uncle's home. That's who he and his wife were going to check on when they steered their Toyota Tundra into high water on Pool Hill Road, a hazard that family members believe should have been better marked or blocked off.

The sheriff's office said the couple called around 12:40 p.m. But by the time deputies were able to send officers and a helicopter, it was too late.

"This is just a remote area, and it takes time to get out here," said Major Chad Norvell.

The water along Pool Hill Road, just past Rogers Road in west Fulshear, was "deep" with a "current," he said.

Up and down the street, homes -- many of which sit hundreds of feet from the road -- were already flanked by water. The neighborhood is about two miles west of the Brazos River, and many of its houses were submerged Wednesday.

Pool Hill Road was for the most part dry. But hours after the accident, family members questioned why there weren't any signs blocking the area or noting dangerous waters on the stretch that proved deadly.

"They didn't have signs up," said Donald's niece Kemosha Washington, 29. "Look at how many homes are out here, and there's no roadblocks."

"If they had had those barricades, my brother would be alive," said Thelma Hooker, 65, the sister of Donald Rogers.

"He would have followed the rules," she said.

But police, who spent much of Wednesday monitoring the rising crest of the nearby Brazos River and moving barricades around the county, said they simply can't block every flooded area.

"Because of the scope of the flooding across the region, there are just too many roads," Norvell said. "There's just too much."

As of Wednesday, more than 30 people had died or were feared dead in greater Houston and other Texas counties in flooding triggered by Tropical Storm Harvey, according to local officials.

Donald Rogers was a preacher at Second Baptist Church in Katy, and his wife was a florist.

"It still hasn't really hit," his sister said a few hours after the accident that killed one of her four remaining brothers. A firetruck was still blocking views of the area in which the couple drowned, and family members were quickly gathering to get details and offer condolences. By 4 p.m. there was a procession of vehicles stretching down Pool Hall Road.

At the time, Hooker still hadn't told her mother, who was still waiting for a visit from her son at her home in Katy.

"He had just spoke with my mom," she said. "(Donald) said he was on the way. So she's expecting him to come."

She and others, she said, were already getting phone calls from the Rogers-Parker matriarch. Her mom had already lost one son, Edward Parker, to cancer, and another, Robert "PeeWee" Parker, six years ago.